Eleanor Friedberger will get personal at Music Hall of Williamsburg on June 29 (photo by Michael Rubenstein)
Music Hall of Williamsburg
66 North Sixth St.
Friday, June 28, $17, 9:00
www.musichallofwilliamsburg.com
www.eleanorfriedberger.com
There’s something extremely comforting about Eleanor Friedberger’s voice, whether she’s singing about loneliness and heartbreak or the streets of her adopted hometown of New York City. With the Fiery Furnaces — the constantly shifting experimental outfit she formed with brother Matt in 2000 — on extended hiatus, the Chicago-born Friedberger has just released her second solo album, Personal Record (Merge, June 4), the follow-up to 2011’s Last Summer. Written with John Wesley Harding, the new songs have a more accessible indie pop feel to them, with infectious melodies and even repeated choruses that harken back to the classic rock she grew up on. Several of the songs feature demonstratively emotional titles — “I Don’t Want to Bother You,” “I’ll Never Be Happy Again,” “You’ll Never Know Me” — although the lyrics are somewhat more abstract and poetic. On the album opener, “I Don’t Want to Bother You,” she sings, “And you’ve given me everything I ever wanted / I want to be scared and I want to be haunted / Judgment impaired by your hair as it falls on my face / You’re a disgrace.” “When I Knew” boasts an irresistible Velvet Underground–like bounce, while she takes a look back, and ahead, on “I Am the Past,” explaining, “I am the past / You’ll never forget me / I’d probably come back and stay if you’d let me / I am the past and you cannot ignore me / You’ve got no idea what happened before me. . . . But mostly I’m me / I’m the past to infinity.” The album concludes with the anti-lullaby “Singing Time,” in which Friedberger repeats, “Singing time is over,” but here’s hoping that for Friedberger, singing time keeps going and going and going. She’ll be playing the Music Hall of Williamsburg on June 29, when she’ll also present the debut screening of her short film, “She’s a Mirror,” based on a song from the sweet new album.